Study Finds Crows To Be Capable of Recursion — A Cognitive Ability Thought To Be Unique To Humans And Other Primates

Crows are some of the smartest creatures in the animal kingdom. According to a new study, crows possess the cognitive ability for one of the linguistic elements that make human language so complex. The insult 'birdbrain' probably stems from the misconception that birds possess little to no intelligence since they have very tiny, nut-sized brains. But this age-old analogy couldn't be further from the truth, considering how savvy these creatures have proven themselves to be.

Put somewhat more simply, similarly to humans monkeys and crows can recognize that a structure can contain other structures with meaning. But for decades scientists thought that humans, or at least primates, are the only animals capable of understanding recursion. Yet, following the discovery, about two years ago, that rhesus monkeys can understand the idea of recursion on a par with three- to four-year-old human children (albeit with some extra training), a team has now conducted similar experiments with crows, and they turned out to outdo monkeys in certain aspects!